Play to Heal™ - Campus Connection Hub

The purpose of the Play to Heal™ – Campus Connection Hub is to create a safe, accessible, and student-driven space where young people can come together to share, listen, and heal. Grounded in therapeutic dialogue games, the platform empowers students to break through isolation, reduce stigma around mental health, and build resilience through peer-to-peer support. It is designed not only to address crises but also to foster belonging, strengthen community, and equip students with lifelong tools for connection and emotional well-being.

The Play to Heal™ – Campus Connection Hub is essential because today’s students are facing unprecedented levels of stress, isolation, and mental health challenges, while campus counseling centers remain overwhelmed and stigma keeps many from seeking help. By creating a student-driven, peer-to-peer platform grounded in therapeutic dialogue games, Play to Heal provides an inclusive, accessible, and proactive space for healing, resilience, and belonging. Without it, campuses will continue to see rising crises, dropout rates, and disconnection, especially among first-generation and marginalized students, losing the chance to transform silence and suffering into connection, empowerment, and collective well- being. The Play to Heal Campus Connection Hub addresses this urgent need by creating a structured, student-driven platform where young people can come together for healing dialogue, emotional support, and community building.

Unlike traditional interventions, Play to Heal meets students where they are — peer-to-peer, accessible 24/7, grounded in therapeutic games designed to open safe conversations about mental health, resilience, and connection. It shifts the model from reactive crisis management to proactive prevention and empowerment.

Leslie R. Robinson

Founder & Visionary of Play to Heal™ – Campus Connection Hub

Leslie R. Robinson is a visionary therapist, inventor, and award-winning social entrepreneur, and the founder of Play to Heal™ – Campus Connection Hub, a groundbreaking platform designed to help college students connect, heal, and thrive in today’s increasingly stressful and disconnected world. With over two decades of hands-on experience working with underserved and marginalized populations—including incarcerated youth and adults, foster care, individuals experiencing homelessness and severe mental illness, runaway and homeless teens, at-risk youth, and having had the honor to serve as a Department of Defense Reintegration Speaker to thousands of returning service members, Leslie brings a deep, empathetic understanding of human struggle, resilience, and the critical need for healing spaces.

As the Founder & CEO of Trance4mation Games, she has developed therapeutic, game-based tools that have impacted over one million lives. Her games have been used to address trauma, grief, addiction, reintegration, prison reentry, belonging, emotional isolation and more - offering innovative solutions to populations often left out of traditional mental health systems.

The Play to Heal™ – Campus Connection Hub extends this powerful mission to college campuses at a time when students are facing unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and social fragmentation. The platform provides a safe, inclusive space for students to engage in guided, peer-to-peer dialogue that fosters emotional expression, connection, and resilience. Through meaningful conversations rooted in empathy and authenticity, students rediscover a sense of belonging and support—without stigma, pressure, or judgment. This isn’t just a project; it is a movement. This Campus Connection Hub responds to an urgent need in higher education: a call for community, healing, and real human connection in an age of digital overload and emotional disconnection.

Through the Play to Heal™ – Campus Connection Hub, Leslie continues her life’s mission: to transform lives, dismantle barriers, and create safe spaces where healing and human connection flourish—especially for those who need it most.

"I am incredibly proud to be working alongside 15 brilliant Macaulay Honors Computer Science student interns from Hunter College—most of whom come from first-generation families and proudly identify as Americans. Their dedication, passion, and sense of purpose are truly inspiring. These students are not only helping to digitize my therapeutic games, but they are also playing a vital role in building the Play to Heal™ – Campus Connection Hub platform from the ground up. Their commitment to mental health, innovation, and community healing embodies the very spirit of this initiative, and reminds me daily that the future is in powerful, compassionate hands."